bsod Windows 10 INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE BSOD

[Skyyblaze]

Hello LTT community!

 

I've been following the LTT YouTube channel for quite some time and originally planned to join the forum-community here last year but some personal issues got me sidetracked. I hate to ask for Tech Support in my very first post but this morning something happened to my Windows 10 install that got me quite stumped. I'm not a fan of the "reinstall Windows" approach and always keep this as a last resort because I actually want to understand problems and why they happen to better handle them in the future, just reinstalling Windows doesn't help me learn I've posted over at Reddit already but I figured I would ask here aswell to see what input I can get.

 

Last night my PC was still working fine and this morning I'm stuck at the seemingly infamous INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE BSOD.

 

To give a bit of info, my PC has two SSDs, one with my affected Windows 10 install and one with my old Windows 7 install, the Win7 drive still boots fine. I can also still access the Win10 SSD from inside Win7 and everything looks fine.

 

The bootloaders of each Windows don't know about the other install, I switch between OSs using my UEFI's Boot Option Manager, hardware-wise both SSDs are a 120gb SanDisk Ultra II.

 

Upon repeated booting of Windows 10 I reached the "Attempting to Repair Windows" phase which is unsuccessful every time, SrtTrail.txt also shows no errors and everything completed successfully but there is something curious to note in the last performed Disk metadata test it reports "Completed successfully" but unlike the other tests it reports "Error code = 0x32" instead of "0x0"

Googling that so far only leads to the conclusion that 0x32 is a generic error code.

 

Other things I tried so far:

 

Running chkdsk from the Repair Environment, the first time it found some errors in the Volume Bitmap and corrected them which unfortunately didn't help, further chkdsk runs indicate no problems.

 

Setting my SATA AHCI setting to IDE also didn't help, I hoped it might have just been a sudden broken AHCI driver but nothing, Safe Mode doesn't work either with the same BSOD.

 

The Windows 10 install was at build 1709 Fall Creators Update with the latest Windows updates installed, last week there was an update that looked like a updated kernel but otherwise I haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary.

 

The only thing of note I did yesterday on my Win10 install was to enable SMB v1 support, rebooted, transferred data from my Nintendo 3DS which needs SMB v1 to be accessed over the network, then disabled SMB v1 support again, rebooted once more and everything seemed okay. I proceeded to play a few games, shut down my PC normally and this morning the whole mess started.

 

Thanks for any help in advance!

[Airdragonz]

The UEFI partition might be corrupt? Have you tried repairing via a windows 10 USB installation stick? 

[Skyyblaze]

1 minute ago, Airdragonz said:

The UEFI partition might be corrupt? Have you tried repairing via a windows 10 USB installation stick? 

Thanks for the reply! I made one now and will try that as a last resort. Currently I'm taking a backup image of the entire Win10 SSD and then I'll try a few fixes I found via the recovery CMD. Apparently this error was very widespread in 2018 due to some faulty Windows 10 updates. In a few occasions people got their Windows back to booting by manually uninstalling the latest updates one by one in a row or by manually inserting the registry backups Windows takes. I will report back if I fix it so other people who run into the same issue might have a chance to fix it. 

[Skyyblaze]

Small update, none of the DISM commands to uninstall the latest updates worked for me and putting a registry backup back in place only resulted in a Windows 10 "Recovering your PC" loop.

 

I'm running out of ideas aside from reinstalling Windows. I've noticed something curious though, I booted back into Windows 7 and mounted my Windows 10 SSD to also do a manual copy of all files to a backup HDD additionally to the image I already did and simply going to my Win10 SSD and doing a CTRL+A, CTRL+C and CTRL+V on the backup HDD leads to the "Copying files..." window to appear for a second and then it simply disappears with no error-message. I have to run a xcopy /h /e /b /c /m command to copy my files over and even then, some files can't be copied saying "The system can't access the file". That mostly happens with files that are part of UWP apps. I assume that's normal?

[Skyyblaze]

Okay I managed to fix it in the end, here is what I did in case someone runs into the same issue:

 

With some help I was able to get my Windows 10 install fixed, the whole mess is caused by two Windows updates that in rare cases cause the boot-drive to be unmounted at boot causing the whole BSOD.

 

First of all let your PC crash-boot once or twice, the next boot should trigger the Windows 10 Recovery Environment, from here select the troubleshooting options and open a command-prompt. In it type C: to switch to your OS drive, it could also be another letter but it's usually C, you can verify which drive you are on by using the DIR command.

 

Once on the OS drive we should first make a new directory we use as a working directory as the space in the Recovery Environment is pretty sparse by itself, to do that simply type mkdir temp which will create a new folder called "temp" on your C: drive. Next we have to verify if one or both of the offending updates are installed, to do this enter the following command:

 

DISM /image:c: /scratchdir:c:\temp /get-packages

 

Obviously replace C: with your letter if your Windows drive has another letter.

 

This command will list all the recently installed Windows Update packages, look fo updates named:

 

Package_for_RollupFix~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~16299.125.1.6

 

and

 

Package_for_RollupFix~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~16299.248.1.17

 

Even if the updates are installed like a week ago and you just ran into the issue now despite rebooting many times inbetween just fine, the updates will still be the cause, it was so for me atleast.

 

First you can try to uninstall the offending updates directly starting with the 1.6 update first. To do that write the following command:

 

DISM /image:c: /scratchdir:c:\temp /remove-package Package_for_RollupFix~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~16299.248.1.17

 

Note: You don't have to manually type the package name out, simply highlight the name with your mouse, right-click to copy it and then right-click to paste.

If that works and the package uninstalls, do the same for the 1.6 package.

 

If it doesn't work and DISM throws error 0x800f082f you have a bit more to do and need a second PC and a USB flash-drive. On the second PC download this update package from Microsoft: http://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=KB4056892

 

Pick the right download for your architecture and OS and you'll get a .msu file. Again on the second PC open a CMD and unpack the .msu file with the command:

expand -F:* "file name of the .msu here without quotes".msu d:\tempmsu

 

This should create a new folder called tempmsu with four files in them, two of them will be .cab files.  Grab the .cab file that contains Windows10.0-KB in its name and put that on your USB drive, then put the USB drive in your broken PC and reboot to the Recovery Environment again and open the Command Prompt back up.

 

We now have to figure out the drive-letter of your USB drive, to do that simply type Notepad into the CMD and press ENTER, Notepad should open up, use its File --> Open dialog to ckeck on the drive letter and go back to the CMD to enter this command:

 

DISM /image:c: /scratchdir:c:\temp /add-packages /pachakepath:L:\Windows10.0-KB4056892-x64.cab

 

Obviously adjust the drive-letter which was L: in my case, and the name of your .cab to your case. This should install the update. After that's done reboot your PC and crash to the Recovery Command Prompt again.  

 

At this point repeat the steps from earlier to remove the 1.17 update package and this time it should work. After that remove your LAN-cable or WiFi, reboot your PC and Windows 10 should boot again, however you are not out of the woodwork yet.

 

After Windows 10 booted DO NOT under any circumstances reboot right away, first make a System Restore Point, then reboot and your Windows install will likely be broken again, that's what we want at this point as the second offending update is still installed.

 

Crash back to the Recovery Command Prompt and repeat the steps to install the .cab from your USB-drive again, after that's done Windows should boot right away and should do so on every boot but we still have to uninstall the 1.6 update.

 

To do that manually boot into the Recovery Environment by holding SHIFT while pressing Reboot in the Windows 10 start menu. Once you are there repeat the steps to show the update-package list, this time you should see the remaining 1.6 update and also a 1.9 update.

 

First use the uninstall command to unistall the 1.6 update, then the 1.9 update directly next.

After that's done, reboot into Windows, open up Windows update, plug your LAN or WiFi back in, check for updates and make sure Windows installs the update KB4074588, after that's done you should be good and everything is fine from here out on!